Orlando Sentinel - U.S. Leadership in Science and Technology at Stake with NASA Bill

Op-Ed

By John Glenn, Jake Garn and Bill Nelson

The nation's space program traditionally has been something that had widespread, bipartisan support. Issues in that realm were dealt with on their merit, based on their technical feasibility and scientific value. And rightly so. For our space program doesn't just keep our country ahead in technology and science, it also is instrumental to our national security.

But the fate of NASA is uncertain. And right now, it rests in the hands of Congress. The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives soon will be ironing out differences in their versions of reauthorizing legislation for NASA. Thus, a unified bill being enacted this year is a real possibility.

That would be good news, because NASA needs additional guidance from Congress on what its future course should be. It especially needs that guidance, because this administration has thoroughly failed to provide the direction — or the funding — necessary to achieve what President Bush called for in January 2004 when he announced the Vision for Space Exploration.

We can only attempt to explain why the administration has undermined the Vision for Space Exploration, though we suspect it can be explained by President Bush not knowing all the facts about what the real impact of NASA's annual budgets has been since the loss of the Columbia in 2003.

We suspect the president doesn't know that, contrary to the post-Challenger experience, NASA has not been reimbursed for the $2.8 billion it has taken to get the space shuttle flying again - more safely, we might add, then ever before.

We suspect the president doesn't know that his budget requests for the Vision for Space Exploration have been on average a half-a-billion per year less than he projected they would be about four years ago.

We suspect the president doesn't know that his direction in 2004 to complete the International Space Station by 2010, and then retire the space shuttle, has been turned into a mandate to end the shuttle program in 2010, whether or not the space station is finished.

We suspect the president doesn't know that his administration's budgeting preferences, without regard to the needs of the nation's space program, are resulting in a five-year gap in U.S. human space-flight capability. That's because NASA won't be ready to launch the shuttle's replacement until at least 2015.

And that means that under the administration's latest budget plan, we will finish the space station around 2010 and then, effectively, walk away from it — unless we pay the Russians and they continue to agree to take fewer of our crew members and researchers into space than we would be able to take ourselves.

Those of us who spent years in Congress fighting for the space station really believed we were building it so we could conduct research aboard it; research that could potentially make vast improvements in the human condition. We never conceived we would build the station only to abandon it.

As fiscal conservatives, we would argue that the potential for undermining and throwing away upwards of a $100 billion investment of taxpayer's dollars to build, launch, assemble and operate the ISS, and then abandon it, would be a waste of taxpayers' money and, thus, contrary to responsible fiscal policies.

Fortunately, the Congress knows what it seems that President Bush doesn't - as is reflected in this year's NASA reauthorization legislation, and as was reflected in last year's very nearly successful effort to add $1 billion to NASA as partial reimbursement of return-to-flight costs.

The Congress knows the completion of the space shuttle's mission — the delivery of the remaining space station elements that can only be delivered by the shuttle without extraordinary additional redesign or reconfiguration costs — is more important than meeting an arbitrary date established by a process that ignores the nation's strategic interests and values in its space exploration efforts in favor of a purely budget-driven planning process.

The Congress should reject the administration's position on the NASA reauthorization bill, because to accept it is to surrender America's leadership in space exploration - in science, technology and military capabilities - at a time when others, including the Chinese, are waiting in the wings or quickly developing the capability to assume that role.

Source